Planes, Trains and Automobiles! Empowering Business Mobility through Virtualization

Planes, Trains and Automobiles! Empowering Business Mobility through Virtualization

Mobility plays an increasingly important role in today’s enterprises.

For many types of workers, “always-on and connected” is now a core requirement. Email is no longer enough; full productivity depends upon real-time access to applications and files, and on the ability to share resources, collaborate or meet from anywhere at any time. Wherever and however they work—in the office, at home or on the road—workers depend on reliable access to a consistent, high-performance computing experience. At the enterprise level, organizations and processes are being transformed by workshifting, a philosophy of moving work to the optimal location, time and resource.

As workplace mobility increases, many workers now use consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops to support business productivity—a trend called consumerization. Consumerization often involves the use of the same mobile device for personal and business purposes, as well using worker-owned devices in the enterprise, called bring your own device (BYOD).

However, escalating mobility has presented many challenges to organizations and information technology (IT) departments, forcing them to rethink traditional methods of providing computing services, ensuring information security, and controlling the use of enterprise technologies.

The need to manage risk must be balanced with the demand by highly mobile workers for freedom of choice and personal control over their computing experience. An optimized mobile computing experience, defined through an innovative and evolutionary approach to mobility, can enable IT to meet both sets of requirements.

Mobile productivity depends on a high-quality user experience

Consumers typically select their personal mobile devices based on convenience, cost and coolness. While enterprise priorities and use cases for these devices can be quite different from personal uses, these principles remain important. Even as IT works to ensure the security of enterprise resources and information, these measures must not undermine the convenience and people-centric computing experience that drive much of the value of the latest smartphones, tablets and laptops. This situation calls for a more relevant, less-invasive approach to security than is allowed under traditional IT practices, which must now be updated to support today’s more flexible workplace.

The proliferation of mobile devices and the increased risk posed by highly mobile data, apps and hardware would be considered frivolous and reckless by traditional IT project metrics. However, today’s mobile users know that the benefits to productivity, collaboration and the overall computing experience greatly surpass the associated costs and risks. More and more, IT shares this recognition—a reflection in part of the emergence of TVO (total value of ownership) as a more comprehensive and meaningful measurement of the effectiveness of business enablement investments than cost alone.

Mobility requires diligence in information governance

Mobility inherently increases risk and challenges the protection of sensitive data. While applications and data are best controlled when they remain in the protective confines of the datacenter, business needs often dictate that they be made available for offline and disconnected usage. Any competent information security professional could find dozens of reasons to say no to increased mobility. The real challenge is finding a way to say yes. To do so, IT needs to leverage new thinking, processes and technology designed explicitly to facilitate mobility while providing an optimal user experience, high TVO and effective information governance.

Citrix Solutions for optimizing mobility to support consumerization, BYOD and workshifting

Enabling worker mobility calls for more than just remote access capabilities. To unlock the full business value of consumerization, BYOD and workshifting trends, IT must optimize the mobile environment to deliver a superior worker experience, maximum TVO, and defensible information governance. These factors are defining characteristics of Citrix virtualization solutions, which include a delivery and services framework to provide end-to-end optimization.

Citrix helps IT get back in the driver’s seat, with appropriate control over and superior visibility into people-centric computing, through a model called virtual computing. IT resources are centralized and delivered as a secure, high-definition service that enables users to work whenever, wherever and on whatever device. Citrix XenDesktop enables on-demand delivery of virtual desktops and applications to give users unprecedented flexibility and mobility while maintaining security. Citrix CloudGateway simplifies access to the full range of enterprise and cloud-based applications on any device though a unified self-service app store with single sign-on. Citrix Receiver provides access to applications and desktops delivered through XenDesktop and CloudGateway on the widest array of mobile devices. ShareFile integration with Receiver (referred to as follow me data) ensures that critical — even sensitive — data is always available and secured. Simply put, workers can easily access all the resources they need anywhere, on any device, for full productivity.

Encouraging workers to embrace mobility

Mobility is one of the most visible and rapidly expanding forces in computing today. Citrix enables customers to deliver an optimal computing experience, balancing user experience, TVO and information governance for protection of valued information assets.

As workers are encouraged to embrace mobility, BYOD and workshifting across a broad range of use cases, they unlock new forms of business value and gain firsthand experience that can be shared throughout the organization. IT gains reassurance that traditional obstacles and risk factors posed by mobility can now be addressed effectively, and develops new mobile strategies and best practices for supporting the business. Far more than an incremental change in enterprise computing, mobility has the potential to transform the way business is done and open the door to tremendous new opportunities for growth and productivity. Helping enterprises realize this potential is now central to IT’s mission — and a core focus for Citrix.

Embark on your journey toward mobility

When you’re ready to map out the strategy that will meet your unique mobility requirements, Sirius has dedicated virtualization specialists who can work with you to design and implement a cost-effective solution for delivering IT services with greater security and agility.

Sirius experts can conduct a Mobility workshop to explore potential options for empowering your end-users and creating more business value. Request a workshop by contacting your Sirius Client Executive.